If human nature felt no temptation to take a chance there might not be much investment merely as a result of cold calculation.

The old saying holds. Owe your banker �1000 and you are at his mercy; owe him �1 million and the position is reversed.

Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement.

I know of only three people who really understand money. A professor at another university. One of my students. And a rather junior clerk at the Bank of England.

Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

Newton was a judaic monotheist of the school of Maimonides

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.